Guys, remember, discussing how bad things are when we actually bring a positive record from Portland is not alright, at least not that much. We have to think that the other teams are in playoffs to win also. We can´t think we are going to sweep every series. For now, I tought last night while watching the game we can try new assignments in the defensive end. Remember these guys are so young we can throw different thing at them and they sould take more time to adjust. My point is: Aldridge is much more faster than our PF´s, just Hayes stood in his way, but hayes had a pass under the rim and made such a sad attempt of layup. Well, we can try Artest with Aldridge, Ron Ron has showed to be slow to contain Roy, and there is nothing wrong with that. I think Artest can stay with him, and has the tools to make a long night for him + he would make Aldridge hesitant. In this sense I just read Aldridge saying the have to be physical with us, what more physica than dealing with artest. I think we can try 3 new guys in Roy, and we can discuss openly this. James White, the guy is quick, is long and is tall, plus he would bring 6 more fouls to the table, remember we shoot horrible from free throw line, but they did too, and in Houston would be even harder. Let´s send this guy to the line a couple times, we have to make him hesitant of his jumper. We can make Wafer give him 2 or 3 hard fouls late in the third, plus he is quick enough to follow him trough the screens. And we can give a try to Lowry a couple of times, he is a very capable defender, that would allow us to have Lowry penetrating and Brooks standing in the corner for a 3. We should also throw a couple zone schemes, they were taking easy jumpers inside the arc, let´s force them to the 3 point, only Roy was going on that. We have to try new things, think this line up: Lowry - Brooks - Wafer - Artest - Scola/Yao
Besides that fluke shot in November, last night was the first time Portland has beaten us all year. We won the last regular season game against them by 20+ points and then won Game 1 by 27 points. Last night, we played crappy, lost the heart and soul of the team for the rest of the year, and missed 10 free throws – yet we STILL came close to eeking out a win and going up 2-0 on the road. I don’t think now is the time to panic and start throwing in new schemes and rotatations. Plus, this post could have easily gone in this thread: http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=167002
Yep, you may be right, it way be better in that thread. I was just trying to underline how overmatched looked our defenders last night. And try to think new assignments as "plan b"
